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3
As will be seen from a glance at the last column of Table
No. 1, the net cost to the rates during the seven years has
remained practically constant, and has never reached in any
one year the sum yielded by a rate equal to id. in the £.
The population, it will be observed, has increased during
this time by nearly 30,000, an addition equal to that of a
considerable town, and this has, of course, necessitated an
increase of staff, apart from the increase in duties from the
assumption of work not previously undertaken.
The cost per head of population has varied only within the
limits of two-fifths of a penny. Although the cost of the
department to the rates has not increased at all, the scope
of the work has been enormously expanded.
The Factory and Workshop Act of 1901 threw a great
amount of additional work upon local authorities, and especially
upon their Public Health Departments.
The Willesden District Council Act still further augmented
the work in this district, and the Education Act of 1902, by
making the local authority the authority for education, created
conditions under which the work of the Public Health Department
necessarily assumed a much more comprehensive
character. Almost every session of Parliament throws some
additional duty upon local authorities, and as the most pressing
social reforms are those relating to the health of the nation,
it is in the health departments that the augmentation of work
is chiefly noticeable in this connection. During the last four
years there have been made, in connection with entirely new